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[Black Friday] IHG 30%-off UK & Europe sale
Our first Black-Friday post – IHG has started their sale early this year.
You can access IHG’s promotion page here. As you may have realised, it’s not really a new offer. “More To See” is a promotion that IHG started earlier this year and has been going on for a while, although the actual content has altered a few times.
In terms of the BF edition:
- Book by January 10th, 2021
- Stay between December 4th, 2020 and April 30th, 2021
- Valid for hotels in the UK and Europe
- You save 32% off the best flexible rate (including 2% member-exclusive)
- Free cancellation allowed 72 hours before check-in
Look for the Book Now Pay Later rate plan when you search:
Here are some London hotels I found, for the first Saturday of December:
- InterContinental London Park Lane £192
- InterContinental London The O2 £134
- Crowne Plaza Kings Cross £67
- Crowne Plaza London Kensington £65
- Hotel Indigo Paddington £59
The rates are not bad, but to be honest I was expecting something more from IHG. At least I thought they’d re-run the 2-for-1 flash sale which was offered a few months ago.
Marriott and Choice selling points with a bonus
Both Marriott Bonvoy and Choice Privileges are selling points with a (decent) bonus at the moment.
For Marriott, the offer’s page is here. It runs only for a week until 25 November. You get a 60% bonus (37.5% discount) when purchasing at least 2,000 points, and the annual purchase limit triples to 150,000 points (pre-bonus).
Factoring in the the bonus you are paying $78.125, or £59 per 10,000 Marriott points, which is a fair trade. This is the best price that Marriott has ever offered, however I’d expect similar promotions to re-appear in the near future, so unless you have a massive demand for Marriott points you don’t have to buy them now.
The second offer is by Choice Privileges, with a decent 40% bonus (28.5% off). This is also one of the better deals you can expect from them.
As discussed here, Choice points can be of great value when redeeming high-end hotel stays in Northern Europe. They are also great for budget hotels in Japan – although it’s less likely for you to be able to travel there anytime soon.
My Review of Hampton London Waterloo
As we’ve mentioned earlier, Hilton is running a very generous promotion for day use rooms. It also happens that I need to spend a few more quid to redeem my Amex cashback deal, so I was looking to spend a few hours in a London Hilton hotel.
The cheapest option in London is Hilton Hyde Park, for a ridiculously low price of £40. However I needed to spend £44 to trigger the Amex offer, So in the end I chose the (slightly more expensive) Hampton Waterloo hotel which is more convenient for me as well.
The hotel is around five-minutes’ walk to the Waterloo train station. Although there’s not much to do in the area, it’s a good base to explore London due to the transport links, and its proximity to the Thames may be preferable to some.
As London is in lockdown and the hotel is only running with skeleton staff, the entrance is closed and you need to buzz the get in. The ground floor / reception area looks quite new and functional.
I was assigned a Queen Room with City View, which is sort of an upgrade due to my Diamond status.
As you can expect from a Hampton hotel, the room is a bit on the small and basic side. It should offer you what you need though.
The bathroom is shower-only.
There isn’t much of a view, but you do see a bit of the City 🙂
Since I only stayed a few hours in the room I don’t have much more to say. The hotel and its rooms are definitely adequate, but from my previous observations it’s not really a lot cheaper than its full-service counterparts in London (Hiltons and Doubletrees). You probably prefer to stay somewhere else as long as you have status.
My points (including the 10,000 bonus) and two night credits posted OK a couple days later.
Amazon sells heavily discounted Melia points (cheap 5-star hotels / Avios!)
We’ve written about Melia quite a few times on this blog. Melia Rewards is a low-key yet valuable hotel loyalty scheme. It runs frequently sales for points purchase which can represent great value.
It’s running another excellent deal on Amazon UK at the moment, which if I remember correctly is the first time. There are two options:
- 55,000 points – £161
- 35,000 points – £103
The 55,000 points one works out slightly better, although at the time of writing it’s temporarily sold out (UPDATE: still available on Amazon DE at the same price). You are paying roughly £30 for 10,000 Melia points, which is close to the record low. In last-month’s points sale on Melia’s website, the price was €35.7 (~£32) per 10,000 points.
As we’ve discussed before (here and here), it’s very easy to outsmart Melia when redeeming your points on hotels. Usually a five-star Melia hotel costs 22,000 points per night whereas a Gran Melia would cost 28,000 points, with few exceptions.
In the worst case, you could spend your points directly at the hotel venue, on food, drinks and spa services etc. The rate is fixed at €5 per 1000 points which is still significantly better than what you are paying now.
Melia is also a transfer partner with British Airways too, so you can transfer your Melia points into Avios at the rate of 10:3. It’s not a great rate, but if BA decides to run 30% conversion bonus in the future, then you are now “buying” Avios at roughly 0.77p.
Note that these are physical paper vouchers shipped to your address and you need to visit Melia’s website to redeem them. Once redeemed, they function as normal Melia points and have the same expiry rules.
Historically Amazon Spain also runs (even better) deals on the same Melia voucher. Although it’s not the case now, as Black Friday in approaching I’ll keep an eye on the relevant page in case it comes back.
Marriott offering free photo books?!
Just received an email from Marriott, with A Thank You Gift in the title. I thought it’s a targeted offer (finally!) and got very excited for a second, but after I clicked through…
It’s a campaign from a company called Shutterfly. You are provided with an offer code that entitles you to a complimentary 20-page photo book when signing up as a new member. I didn’t proceed, but I’m not convinced it’s really “free” either, as I guess you’ll need to pay at least the postage in the end.
Speaking of targeted promotions, I received one from Marriott in February 2019, which was the first and, thus far the last too… I’ve seen different variants that people have received in the last couple of months:
- Stay twice earn 22,500 points
- Stay three times earn 9,000 points
- Stay three times earn 18,000 points
- Stay once (including weekend) earn 18,000 points
- Double points on weekend stays
- Double points on two-night stays
- Stay twice earn two free night awards
You can check if you’re targeted by any of them by visiting the Promotion Centre. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to have them manually added to your account.
10,000 bonus points for booking Hilton’s day room
Hilton is the pioneer in opening day-use bookings – their system has long supported booking day rooms directly. As the competition in this market is heated, Hilton has revamped this idea and come up with something new.
The new scheme around day rooms is called WorkSpaces, and you can access its page here. The idea is nothing new – you have a room from 9am to 5pm, earn points and stay credits, and elite benefits such as room upgrade / lounge access also apply.
Until the end of March 2021, you’ll be awarded 10,000 bonus points for the first day-use booking completed during the promotion period. Note that only hotels in the UK, USA and Canada are participating.
Here are some cheap London hotels:
- Hampton by Hilton London Waterloo £48
- Hart Shoreditch Hotel London £56
- Hilton London Hyde Park £52
- Hilton London Olympia £40
- Hampton by Hilton London Ealing £42
And I expect hotels in other regions to offer even lower rates.
To book, simply visit Hilton’s website and select the same check-in and check-out date. Note that some hotels call the rate simply “Day Use” and others “Workspaces – Day Use”. To be safe I’d recommend to book the latter.
Promotions such as the current double-up should also apply. In theory you won’t get night credit though, but it depends how the hotel logs your stay.
According to the terms – “you must have received this offer directly from Hilton Honors”. It might be a targeted offer, but I’ll book a stay anyway and see how it goes.
Jumeirah One double tier points & complimentary night enrolment offer
Jumeirah is a hotel group bases in the UAE. Maybe you haven’t heard of its name, but you must have seen their iconic “sailboat” hotel in Dubai: Burj Al Arab:
Jumeirah has three properties in London:
They also have a loyalty programme named Jumeirah One, which honestly isn’t super exciting. However, if you intend to book any Jumeirah hotels in the next month there’s a promotion worth noting:
- Booking dates: 1 November – 15 December
- Stay by: 30 September 2021
- All stays earn double tier points
You usually earn two tier points for each US dollar spent. With this offer you need an expense of $1,250 to reach Silver (5,000 points), which still isn’t cheap. However Silver tier comes with welcome amenity, free breakfast for two and 2pm late check-out.
Jumeirah One also has a long-running enrolment offer. New members earn a “complimentary one-night voucher” after the first eligible stay. It sounds very generous until you read the terms——
You must book a minimum three consecutive nights (or four nights at resort hotels) to use the voucher, at best flexible rate. So it’s not really a complimentary night, but more of a “Buy two get one free” discount voucher.
Anyway, the voucher may still save you some money if you stay at Jumeirah a fair bit. It’s valid for six months from the date of issue.
GHA membership and offers extension
Earlier this year GHA (quietly) extended all elite members’ status through 2020. It appears that they’ve done it again – when logging into my account I see that my Black status is now valid till the end of 2021:
This is good news, and I expect an official announcement to follow soon.
Two ongoing offers are also extended to the end of 2020: